Kiss of Death (1947)

(Fox Home Entertainment, 12.6.2005)

Kiss of Death is the best known of the four films noir director Henry Hathaway made during 1945-1948 because of its pioneering location shooting and Richard Widmark's indelible psycho killer. The film combines Fox's documentary approach to crime (seen in Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street) with more standard noir elements, while tossing in a surprising amount of domestic drama.

Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) is shot fleeing the scene after robbing a Manhattan jewelry store. District Attorney Louie DeAngelo (Brian Donleavy) wants Nick to squeal on his pals and, when he refuses, he is sent to Sing Sing. After Nick's wife commits suicide, he relents, wanting to be reunited with his motherless daughters. Nick settles down with his new wife, Nettie (Coleen Gray), his former babysitter, and the little girls only for DeAngelo to ask him to testify against Tommy Udo (Widmark). Nick then fears Udo will come gunning for his family in revenge.

Hathaway effectively uses the Manhattan locales, which include the Chrysler Building, where the opening robbery occurs, and the famous jail The Tombs. There is also the prison in Ossining, New York, a convent in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Nick's middle-class neighborhood in Astoria, Queens. A title at the beginning of the film claims it was shot entirely on location but, according to the commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini, Fox was dissatisfied with the ending and reshot it on the Fox backlot.

Kiss of Death presents Nick as a martyr, with both Hathaway and screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer providing significant religious imagery: Nick framed in front of a cross, etc. DeAngelo comes off as a somewhat sinister manipulator who cares little about the risks he asks Nick to take. Nick is a true noir hero, a victim of fate with conflicted emotions and suffering, but the domestic scenes soften the noir qualities a bit too much.

Sometimes described as his era's Sylvester Stallone, Mature actually has a fair range, but wasn't given many chances to show it with this film and John Ford's My Darling Clementine being the most notable exceptions. He makes Nick sensitive without being too sentimental, though he's called upon to clutch the little girls a tad too often and Mature's muscular bulkiness makes Nick's helplessness all the more poignant.

In his terrific film debut, the Oscar-nominated Widmark makes the giggling sadist Udo the most distinctive screen villain of the forties. Udo's pushing a woman (Mildred Dunnock) in a wheelchair down stairs, especially intense for 1947, is the film's most famous moment.

Ursini and Silver, whose latest book is "L.A. Noir: The City as Character," offer a more interesting commentary than they do for Hathaway's The Dark Corner. They analyze Norbert Brodine's atmospheric lighting and discuss the difficulties Hathaway, rightfully called an "extremely underrated director," faced in shooting on location, including filming inside an elevator with a newly developed lens. They also describe an incident in which Mature stood up to the notoriously abusive director. Unfortunately, unlike most of the other titles in Fox's noir series, Kiss of Death is occasionally marred by dirt and scratches.

Kiss of Death was first remade in 1958 as The Fiend Who Walked the West with Hugh O'Brian in Mature's role and, proving he was no actor, Robert Evans in Widmark's. The dismal 1995 version with David Caruso and Nicolas Cage is notable only for naming Cage Little Junior Brown and the great, but diminutive Philip Baker Hall Big Junior Brown. -- Michael Adams